So, while nearly all Pro-BoDers make no account whatsoever regarding the necessity of the Sacraments, many Anti-BoDers on the other hand do not recognize that there is a way to uphold the necessity of the Sacraments ... even though I consider it to be weak and very flimsy at best, especially when you get into "implicit" territory.
Anti-BoDers correctly establish the MAJOR that the Sacrament of Baptism is necessary for salvation, but a handful of those who favor BoD, most outstandingly St. Robert Bellarmine, realizing that the Sacrament must be operative somehow in order to avoid denying the necessity, carefully articulate that nobody can be saved WITHOUT the Sacrament, but only without ACTUAL RECEPTION of the Sacrament. Thus, St. Robert says not that those saved by BoD do not receive the Sacrament, but rather that the receive it in voto even if not in actu. Now, as to how the Sacrament can "operate" by way of this votum, especially where someone doesn't even know about the Sacrament or believe in it, i.e. "implicitly", that's a mystery ... not unlike to how some people say that EENS really just means that there's no salvation except BY MEANS OF the Church, an illegitimate transmogrification of the dogma that even +Lefebvre did. Similarly, the Sacrament of Baptism must remain the instrumental cause of salvation/justification (depending on your position -- which we prescind from for now) even in a BoD scenario, since otherwise you're denying the necessity of the Sacrament for salvation.
I've invited those BoDers whose articulations are at once a heretical denial regarding the necessity of the Sacrament(s) for salvation and at the same time Pelagianism (at least semi-, but I think far more than semi-), where effectively salvation becomes an ex operantis endeavor ... ironically exactly like the Protestant heresies that Trent was condemning, I've invited them to at least reword their definition and explanation of BoD to make it uphold the necessity of the Sacrament. Otherwise, we have this bizarre notion of the "Anonymous Baptized", people who have somehow been saved by the Sacrament without even knowing it, having no idea what it is, never explicitly desiring it ... but by some strange mystical invisible mechanism, kindof like that "action at a distance" attributed to quantum physics that Einstein denounced as "spooky".
I struggle very much to comprehend how that works, ontologically speaking. HOW exactly does the Sacrament of Baptism function ex opere operato through this votum in order to instrumentally cause salvation. There's only one way to posit this, IMO, and that's to shift the necessity of Baptism into being a necessity of precept ... which is precisely what Bishop Sanborn does in his Anti-Feeneyite Catechism.
Topic: Claiming something is not "de fide" still has hellish consequences (Read 58618 times)